ICICI Bank will become the first private sector company to sell equity shares to retail investors at a discount. Shares will be sold to retail investors at a price lower than the prices for qualified institutional investors and non-institutional high-networth bidders.

ICICI Bank has decided to have a concurrent domestic equity issue and an ADS (American depository shares) offer aggregating 20 crore shares, including a 15 per cent greenshoe option.

The domestic issue will approximately be 73 per cent of a total capital of Rs 7,000 crore to be raised by the bank. Both the domestic and ADS issues will have a greenshoe option amounting to Rs 1,050 crore. This issue and the ADS offer are part of a consolidated capital-raising exercise being undertaken by ICICI Bank.

According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) guidelines, 35 per cent of the total issue size are reserved for retail investors, 15 per cent for high-networth investors and the remaining 50 per cent are for qualified institutional investors.

Earlier, the government had sold the shares of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Gas Authority of India Ltd and IPCL to retail investors at a discount of 5 per cent compared with the price for institutional investors.